


summer sun, something's begun

by Aramley



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-02
Updated: 2010-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-07 16:00:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/66721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>summer heat, boy and girl meet</i>. Set at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Genderswap AU (always a girl!Roger). Help_haiti fic for <a href="http://ficchica.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://ficchica.livejournal.com/"><b>ficchica</b></a> - many thanks for your bid! Thanks also to <a href="http://pandatini.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://pandatini.livejournal.com/"><b>pandatini</b></a> for the help and beta.</p>
            </blockquote>





	summer sun, something's begun

_Athens, 2004_

"That guy is staring at you," Mirka says, low and in German, so that Rogelyn has to strain over the dining-hall hum of voices to hear her.

"What?"

"That guy," Mirka repeats, with a slight yet significant tilt of her head to the right, "is staring at you."

Rogelyn shrugs, pokes some more at her salad. "Half the people here have been staring at me."

"Maybe," Mirka says. "But trust me, they don't all look like _that_."

Rogelyn starts to turn, and gets a sharp poke to the wrist from Mirka's plastic fork for the trouble. "Don't be so obvious!"

"For goodness's sake," Rogelyn says, but she turns slower this time, pretending to look over at the entrance to the dining hall, which affords her a brief view of the boy in question, and she catches a glimpse of dark eyes before he turns quickly away. "Who, that? Isn't that Nadal? Rafael Nadal, the Spanish boy?"

"Oh," says Mirka. "I _thought_ I recognised him. I mean," she adds, with a smile, "who could forget _that_ face, right?"

"Mirka," Roge chides, half-laughing.

"What? You don't think he's good-looking?"

Roge rolls her eyes. "He's a teenager."

"He's nineteen, Roge," Mirka says. "It's not as if you're poaching from the Juniors. And anyway, _he's_ staring at _you_. Again."

-

She forgets about Nadal, mostly, until a day later, walking back alone through the Village to her apartment block in the afternoon after lunch, when she spots the boy looking lost and alone at the edge of the road. There's a map in his hands, and he keeps glancing down at it, then up again, then down, turning the much-crumpled map on its side once or twice with rough, frustrated movements.

"Hi," she says, when she's close enough. "Do you need help?"

He startles visibly, and again as he recognises her. "Oh," he says, "I - no, I - thank you."

"Where are you trying to go?" Roge asks, reaching for the crumpled map, which he releases easily as she grasps it. "The Spanish contingent are staying here," she says, pointing out a block of apartments on the map. "Is that the place you're trying to get to?"

"I," Nadal says, then, embarrassed, "Please, more slowly, no?"

"Sorry," Rogelyn says, smiling ruefully. She says, slower, "I was asking if you were trying to get to the Spanish block?"

"Ah," says Nadal, with a smile. "Yes. But all these buildings look the same, no? So I get lost." He shrugs, laughing at himself.

"It's okay," Roge says. "It's not far from my block. You want to walk with me?"

"Oh, sure," Nadal says. "If is no trouble for you?"

"No, no," Roge says, waving a hand dismissively, enjoying his obvious discomfort just a little bit, even as she offhandedly recognises how sweet it is. "I'm Rogelyn," she says, holding out a hand for him to shake. There's a bare inch or two between them in height, but his hand envelops hers when he takes it after a moment's hesitation, his fingers long and strong, his palm warm and dry against hers. He grips her hand properly - not lightly, the way some men do when they shake hands with a woman.

"I know who you are," he says, nodding. "Everyone know who you are, no? I am Rafael Nadal. Rafa."

"Rafa," Roge says, trying it out. "It's good to meet you. You can call me Roge, if you like."

"Roger?" Rafa says, and Roge just nods, because really, it's close enough. "Good to meet you," Rafa says, with maybe a little unintentional emphasis on the _you_, because he lets go of her hand and colours, just a little, and Roge bites back on a laugh.

-

The tennis centre is brand new, and she savours the newness of it, stepping onto the practice court for the first time with a kind of reverent anticipation, like spreading her palm across the enticing blankness of a fresh page in a book. She is twenty-four, the new-minted world number one, with three Grand Slams to her name, but she dreams of the weight of the gold medal around her neck, and here, now, in Athens, everything seems flush with possibility.

"Stop daydreaming," Mirka says, pinching Roge's arm. "Come on. Work."

Later, sheened with sweat and feeling the euphoria of physical work and exhaustion, she jogs over to the bench for water. In the midmorning sun it's achingly hot, perspiration plastering her vest and shorts to her body uncomfortably, the short curls of her hair clinging at the nape of her neck and over her forehead, dripping beads of sweat onto her eyelashes. There are a few spectators idling at the edges of the practice court, and she thinks, scanning the shapes through the prismed light between her eyelashes, that she recognises one. She wipes the sweat away from her eyes with a wristband, and the shape coalesces into Rafael Nadal.

She turns, flashes Mirka a sign that means _five minutes, please?_ Mirka frowns, then glances at a point over Roge's shoulder and smiles, slowly. She gives an emphatic thumbs up, arching her eyebrows suggestively as she does so, and Roge sincerely hopes that Rafa - or anyone else in the small gathering - didn't see that.

"Rafa, hi," she says as she approaches, and Rafa stands up to meet her, flashing one of those smiles, the bright wide ones that light up his whole face, that make him beautiful.

"Hello," he says, seeming at once younger and older than nineteen, with his boyish smile at odds with the sleeveless shirt and his muscled, gleaming bare arms. "Your practice is good?"

"Yeah," Roge says, smiling. "Mirka makes me work hard."

Rafa glances behind at Mirka. "She is your coach?"

"She's, uh," Rog glances back over her shoulder at Mirka, talking on her cellphone at the benches. Is there a word for what Mirka is? "She's like - my sister. Sort of," Roge says, which is true but terribly vague and confusing, and Rafa frowns just a little.

"My uncle is my coach," he offers, and Roge decides that it's probably best to change conversational tacks.

"When is your first match?" she asks, then, "When do you play first?" and immediately feels as though she's been patronising, and feels herself going hot across her cheekbones.

"Day after tomorrow," Rafa says, blithely, as though he hasn't noticed. He reaches up to tuck an errant strand of hair back up under his bandanna, and she can't help but notice his long fingers, the strangely beautiful delicacy of the gesture. "You?"

"Uh," she says, caught a little off-guard. "The day after that."

Rafa nods, and opens his mouth to say something, and then seems to change his mind, says instead, "Your, uh, sister, she is waving at you," he says. "I will leave you to continue. Good luck for the match, no, if I no see you before?"

"Yeah," Roge says, returning the smile. "Thanks, you too, yeah? Tell Moya I wished him good luck too."

"I will," Rafa says, with another one of those smiles that seem to settle warm and heavy in the region of Roge's solar plexus.

"Sorry to interrupt," Mirka says, when Roge makes her way back to the court, "but we only booked this court until eleven, and you looked like you might stand there and flirt all day."

"I wasn't flirting," Roge protests, ducking down to retrieve a new racket from her bag, face flushing in the heat. When she straightens back up, Mirka is watching her, head tilted knowingly.

"Oh honey," she says, with a smile. "You are so smitten."

-

Because she's twenty-four, and not fourteen, she doesn't think about him all the time or stop eating or any of that other nonsense; what she mostly gets is a lot of grief from Mirka, but Rogelyn knows for a true and accurate fact that Mirka has a folder of pictures on her laptop called 'Carlos Moya is a love god' that she thinks nobody knows about, so Mirka is not exactly occupying high ground in this situation. It's the Olympics; the Games have started; there are seven matches between her and the longed-for gold. So she spends a few off-moments idly remembering the burnished bronze gleam of Rafa's arms in the sunlight, or maybe taking a second glance around the dining hall when they walk in, on the off-chance that the Spanish tennis team are there, but otherwise she's focused, determined, anticipation thrumming through her body in the lead-up to the start of the tennis tournament.

"Oh," Mirka says, scrolling through a spreadsheet of results on her laptop the night before Roge's first round match.

Roge, double-checking her kit bag for the next day, looks up. "What?"

"Moya and your boy-toy crashed out," Mirka says, glancing over, her smile wry. "First round, straight sets, against Brazil."

"He's not my boy-toy," Roge shoots back, instinctive, over the sudden strange little twist in her stomach. "When was this?"

"Day before yesterday," Mirka says. "Sorry, Sandy, I guess Danny had to head home."

Roge stares. "What?"

"_Summer lovin', happened so fa-ast_," Mirka sing-songs, in English, and then, at Roge's blank look, says, "How - I mean honestly, how - do you even exist?"

-

Perhaps, she thinks, in the end, she'd just wanted it too badly. On court she'd been tight, shanking forehands into the net too often, shearing shots a hair wide of the lines, the pressure and the frustration settling on her shoulders and weighting her down until it was over. She shuts her eyes and leans back against the warm tile of the balcony wall, trying not to envision the headlines of tomorrow.

When the knock on the door comes, she considers ignoring it in favour of staying here on the smooth tile, soaking up the last warm-gold rays of the sun. The energy-sapping humidity of the day settles at sunset into a soft, gently enveloping warmth that she loves. But at the second bout of knocking, she sighs and pushes herself up; if it's Mirka, her key forgotten, Roge is going to kill her.

"Coming," she calls, absently, as she pads barefoot through the apartment, already packed up in preparation for the flight back to Switzerland. "Wait there."

She pulls the door open sharply, a snappy comment already dying on her lips as she realises that it's not Mirka at all, but Rafa, with a shy smile and a big bunch of purple flowers in one hand, held stiffly in front of him.

"Hi," he says, tucking his hair back in that quick, nervous motion. "I hope I am not, uh, interrupting?"

"I - no," Roge says, feeling her own smile start. Absently, she tugs at her old practice skirt, straightening it, conscious suddenly of her bare legs and feet and also of the fact that she is being more than a little ridiculous. "No, please. Uh, do you want to come in?"

"No, no, I just -" he holds the flowers out to her, with a stammered, "here, these for - sorry for your match, no? Sorry."

Something warm and soft spreads wings behind Roge's ribs as she reaches out to take the flowers, laughing just a little bit even though she knows she shouldn't, but the way Rafa's English breaks when he's nervous is really too adorable for words.

"Thank you," she says. "Sorry for your match, too. It happens to the best of us," she says, with a shrug.

Rafa nods, smiling. "Is okay. Always next time, no?" he says, with the easy assurance of nineteen that's a luxury twenty-four can little afford. Still, Roge smiles, and inhales the sweet scent of the flowers.

"Thank you for these," she says. "They're really beautiful. You really don't want to come in?" She wishes he would, if only because the Village is alive with gossips, and the last thing she needs is to set some tabloid hack up with a story, and have it dog her for the rest of the year.

But, "No, I have to go practice with Carlos," Rafa says, shuffling awkwardly in the doorway. He's blushing, just a little. "But I - I mean, will you - you are maybe free, tomorrow?"

"No," Roge says, processing somewhere in the back of her mind that she's being asked out on a _date_. "Sorry, I'm - we're flying home tomorrow."

"Oh," Rafa says, ducking his head quickly before he looks back up, all nervous energy scattering. "Sorry, I will leave you to get ready. Sorry again for your match," he says, starting to turn away before Roge says, "No, wait, just a moment," and he pauses, turning back.

"Wait just a second," Roge says, decisively, turning back into the room. Mirka is the one who's good at organising things, and if Mirka were here she'd have a pen and paper to hand, but that's why Roge keeps her around, and on her own all she can manage is to tear a strip from the wrapping of the flowers and dig out an old biro that blots the paper.

"Here," she says, holding the scrawled-over strip of paper back to Rafa. "This is my email address, and my cell number. Maybe we can, you know, keep in touch?"

Rafa smiles, looking like he's about to brim over with happiness. "Yes. Okay," he says simply, reaching out to take the scrap from her. Their fingers brush, his warm and dry against hers. Twenty-four, she reminds herself. Not fourteen.

"Maybe in New York we could have dinner, or something," she tries again, aiming for business-like.

"I like that very much," Rafa says, folding the paper with her number and email on it and holding it in the palm of his closed hand like he's afraid someone's going to come along and try to take it from him.

"I'd like that a lot, too," Roge says, and they share a smile.

**epilogue.**

_Times Online_  
June 12th, 2018

_Rafael Nadal and Rogelyn Federer were married this weekend in a small, private ceremony in Nadal's home town of Manacor, Mallorca, attended by family and close friends of the couple._

Federer and Nadal - both former world number ones - notched up an impressive twenty-nine Grand Slam singles titles during their combined careers. As a partnership, they won the mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon in 2008 and the US Open in 2011.

The couple met during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.


End file.
